An Analysis of the World's Most Watched Fashion Show

Month: January 2016

Mirriam Webster defines sexualization as deriving one’s value from their sexual appeal or behaviour, while excluding other characteristics. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is a major corporation which has utilized the sexualization of women to construct their brand. These models have been turned into “sex-objects” for men and women everywhere. Wilhoit (2013) discusses Victoria’s Secret’s recently launched line of products targeting teen girls which encourages sex appeal. The campaign features the slogan, ‘Bright Young Things,’ and is aimed at 15 to 22 year olds, according to the Victoria’s Secret website. This slogan can be considered problematic, dehumanizing and sexualizes young women, because it refers to young women and teens as ‘things’. Advertisements for this new line features young looking models who are inadequately portrayed in provocative poses, which is sexualizing young women everywhere (Wilhoit, 2013). Recent Victoria’s Secret advertisements target young teens, promoting underwear that have phrases such as “Feeling Lucky” and “Call Me”. (Cole, 2013). These ads are influencing girls to sexualize themselves and this new line of clothing and promotion is sending a problematic message to youth worldwide. According to Wilhoit (2013), contemporary society views the most important attribute of women as their sexuality, rather than their intelligence and personality. The Victoria’s Secret advertising campaign adopts this misconception with its sexualized portrayal of women. Recently the show has been sexualizing adult and teen women more and more every year with their newly introduced promotional videos and photo-shoots (Harrington, 2015). Kite et al. (2013) discussed how the brand portrays that power comes from enhancing, fixing, and flaunting one’s bodies which can be seen as an issue, because it relies on women thinking beautiful and sexy is thin, tall and young. Valenti (2008) suggested that women have been viewed as living in tempting bodies for men, which has been used to justify the problematic social control of the population for a long time and is demonstrated in the Victoria Secret brand.

Victoria’s Secret sells their ideal version of femininity in their yearly shows, as well as advertisements leading up to the show. Victoria’s Secret’s marketing plan hinges on fantasy: the idea of promoting images that women should “aspire” to be. (Andrews, 2015). Edwards (2010) claimed that their lack of racial diversity has been demonstrated year after year, as well as the problematic way they differentiated and sexualized various races in their brand. She discussed that for years, the business refused to use non-white models in their show, and in their ads because they were not viewed as societies “picture perfect” runway model icons. If they did, models were often used to promote animal prints and African-themed garments (Edwards, 2010). He also discussed how when African American women were introduced to the show, one of their first segments was called “Wild Things,” and they had to wear tribal body paint and African wraps. The way the brand sexualized these women was significantly different then how they portrayed white women. This also demonstrates how the show disrespected and generalized different cultures and represented them inaccurately in their costumes for the show. White women in the show wore angel items and the black women were represented based off of their skin color. As well, all of the main Victoria’s Secrets angels are white and have always been. This shows the current and long lasting barrier and lack of diversity because only 30% of models in the show are from minorities (Builder 2015). If this continues, young girls will begin to feel that they are less desired due to their skin tone and when they are desired, a woman of that race is wearing sexual outfits based off of their specific culture.

The Victoria’s Secret model’s photos are promoted everywhere and do not accurately represent all shapes and sizes of women, and one might say Victoria’s Secret works within a very narrow range of unrealistic silhouettes (Brakebill, 2014). Christine (2014) found that 83% of adolescent girls read fashion magazines every week. “Girls are being taught to obsess over their appearance, their weight, and whether their bodies are “good enough.”” (Christine, 2014). The average woman is 5’4″ tall, and weighs 166 lbs. In comparison, the average model is 5’10” tall and weighs only 107 lbs (Christine, 2014). Studies claim that women feel pressured to be beautiful by the age of 14 and by age 29, that number increases to 90 percent, which means girls may turn into their own worst beauty critics (Granja-Sierra, 2013). This intensifies the pressure to achieve an unrealistic body, and is an underlying cause of various health issues. Most girls are left with mixed reactions to the images they see on the TV screen and computer, and compare themselves to the models, so women feel even more pressure to attain that ideal body image. It is suggested that the sexualizing of women has negative consequences on one’s ability to develop a healthy sexual image. After women see advertisements such as the ones from the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show, they could try to copy them (Stanley, 2009). He also suggested that due to more vulnerability from copying the way these models look and dress, there could be more rape cases in our society. The teenage pregnancy rate in the United States is three to ten times higher than in other industrialized nations (Conlon, 2006). “As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings, ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls,” (Dr. Zurbriggen, 2007). “The goal should be to deliver messages to all adolescents that lead to healthy sexual development.” Milestone et al. (2012) stated that women in popular culture are scrutinized in terms of the size and shape of their bodies every day due to how society views a women’s body as “beautiful”, like the Victoria’s Secret angels. The beauty ideal is narrow and women are expected to compensate for their own appearance deficiencies by using makeup and fashion to live up to societies standards (Milestone et al. 2012).

Therefore, it can be seen how the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show sexualizes women of all races in different ways and negatively influences women worldwide.

With 500 million viewers in 2015 (Robehend, 2015), it’s hard to argue that the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is not a popular event. This lingerie show features some of the world’s top paid models (Forbes 2015) and contains a variety of musical performers. As it has grown in popularity it has become much more performance-based than fashion-based (Harrington, 2015). The reasons behind its popularity, however, are most definitely up for debate. Some say that it is a form of artwork (Feldman 2014), however others maintain that it fosters “an unhealthy relationship with materialism” (Gould 1994). Many point out fairly obvious issues with the show: its lack of diversity (only 30% of models are from racial minorities (Builder 2015) which points to a dramatic lack of diversity), near-impossible beauty standards (Fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women (Smolak 1996)), emphasis on consumerism, and objectification of women (Granja-Sierra). Discussing the show through intersectional analyses opens up important deliberations about the ways the performance produces problematic narratives of race, class, gender, and more.